


Toy Soldier

by TempestRising



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: BB-8 is a good bro, Child Soldiers, Finn Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Finn was a child soldier, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Stormtrooper Culture, Stormtrooper Rebellion, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21856222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempestRising/pseuds/TempestRising
Summary: After the events ofThe Last JediFinn wonders what happened to the other storm troopers aboard the "enemy" ships.Or:"You were friends.""No," Finn said, swiftly. Rey was his friend. Poe was his friend. The other troopers were his comrades, and that was different. "We just watched out for each other. If I was sick, someone would give me their rations. We covered weaknesses. We didn't rat out other squad members to ranking officers.""Sounds like friendship to me."
Relationships: BB-8 & Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron & Finn
Comments: 5
Kudos: 148





	Toy Soldier

__

_GENERAL HUX: I won't have you question my methods._

_KYLO REN: They're obviously skilled at committing high treason. Perhaps Leader Snoke should consider using a clone army._

_GENERAL HUX: My men are exceptionally trained -- programmed from birth --_

_- **Star Wars: The Force Awakens**_

.***.

After they were well away from Crait, the stars blurring as they sped in and out of hyperspace; after Finn had stopped staring at Rey, the wholeness of her, to let the Jedi get some sleep; after Rose disappeared with Chewie into the bowels of the Falcon to tap on some part or another; after everything was suddenly, miraculously squared away (for now) Finn sought out Poe.

The pilot was taking it hard, the loss of the fleet, the loss of Admiral Holdo, how diminished they were after just a few days of the renewed Resistance, and Finn didn't want to pile on Poe's problems but Poe was half-bent over an old game of 3-D chess, staring at the holographic pieces, swigging something dark and viscous while BB-8 rolled dejectedly at his feet and, well, he looked rather alone, and Finn couldn't help himself.

He hovered, still not quite comfortable sitting in front of ranking officers (the Resistance was different, he told himself, several times a minute it seemed like. Chaotic, frighteningly underequipped, fiercely led, haphazard, _different _.)__

__Poe noticed Finn standing close. He always noticed. "You look like you're about to fall over," Poe commented, gesturing at the empty space next to him._ _

__"I can't keep track of the days," Finn admitted, sliding into the empty booth. "Between - I don't know? Where does today start? Between waking up in the medical bay, and Crait, and Canto Bright, and the ship..." he trailed off. The ship._ _

__"The Resistance operates on a three-shift time system, eight hours a shift." Poe rolled his eyes, possibly at himself. "At least it did, when there was a Resistance, and it did, when we had anything remotely resembling shifts."_ _

__Finn filed that away. The First Order operated on a three-shift system, too. Ten hours on, ten hours for sleep, ten for maintenance. He'd have to check with someone - Threepio, maybe - to see if time itself was different in the Resistance. Everything else was._ _

__"Get some sleep," Poe said, squeezing Finn's knee. It was an innocuous gesture. Touch was different here, too. Rose had kissed him. Kissed him! And Finn knew that meant different things to different races, had seen something darker in the ranks of the First Order, had seen species kiss as a greeting or for pleasure, knew that there were people who touched lips without power being involved, but that wasn't a life he understood. He filed Rose away in an uncomfortable section of his mind, slightly behind Poe and Rey and BB-8._ _

__Finn lifted his hand, suddenly unsure. He had touched Poe so easily before, and Han Solo, and Rey, but now, with downtime, he recoiled from those memories. They had been on the run, then. Protocols were different now. "You should sleep," Finn insisted. Ranking officers first._ _

__"I'll sleep when she does." Poe jutted his chin in the direction of General Organa, who was listening to a shaking female pilot._ _

__Poe took another drink. Finn gathered the edges of his courage. BB-8 rested against his leg, a comforting weight. "Poe..."_ _

__"Finn?"_ _

__"Do you think...?" the courage left him. The question was traitorous, treasonous. He was a part of the Resistance now. He shouldn't care._ _

__Poe kept looking at him and Finn tried to think of an alternative end to his question, a way to take it back, take it all back. He was tired. Rey was stretched out in a bunk downstairs and had asked Finn to join her and Finn liked that idea, curling up against each other, waking up next to Rey and not in the middle of a battle but just two people, safe with each other._ _

__He was too tired. The day had been too long. The question tumbled out, a whisper. "Do you think anyone on the ship survived?"_ _

__"What, Snoke's ship?" Poe managed a ghost of a grin. "You were there, man. You know there's nothing left. We got 'em. In the end. We got 'em this time."_ _

__Finn licked his lips. Poe looked happy, and he should be happy. Holdo was dead. His friends were dead. Luke Skywalker was dead. But so was Snoke, and so was a Phasma and a majority of the First Order's mobile forces._ _

__And that was the problem._ _

__"So you didn't see, like, any other escape pods? Like - like me and Rose and BB-8? No one else got off?"_ _

__"Kylo-Ren sure got off," Poe said, darkly. "Hux, too. I'm sure there were others."_ _

__Of course. Higher-ranking officers got first priority of the escape pods, the auxiliary craft. Finn knew that. He closed his eyes. Okay. He had abandoned the First Order. He knew what he was leaving behind. People. Friends. His squadron. He was never going to see them again, anyway._ _

__But he'd thought they'd live. He'd hoped they'd live. He blinked rapidly. They didn't even get names. He'd remember them forever as numbers._ _

__"Hey. Hey." Poe's hand was back on his leg. Squeezing. "What's up? Seriously, you need some rest, Finn. Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like shit."_ _

__He imagined squeezing in with Rey, body-warm. He'd never slept with someone before. Perhaps with his mother, when he'd had a mother, but memories of his life before the First Order were the first things that were conditioned out of him, and he had only a vague sense of motherhood, of a hand cupping his cheek, of water poured down his throat on hot desert days. He tried not to turn to the memories too much. At first, when he was skinny and six and scared, the memories were painful. Now he was afraid of over-handling the impressions he had left, as if his mother and his life before being a soldier was a photograph that could get smudged and torn by touch._ _

__"I just can't believe they're all dead," Finn said. And immediately wanted the words back._ _

__Poe began to nod, then put a hand on Finn's shoulder (more touch!), eyes hardening. "We lost some great pilots today. Some great people."_ _

__Finn nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, that's what I meant."_ _

__"Stormtroopers died, too."_ _

__The hand on his shoulder gripped hard. "I am loyal to the Resistance," Finn insisted. Hoped Poe wouldn't notice how his voice shook._ _

__"I know, buddy."_ _

__"I know I deserted. I know I - that I'm a traitor to the First Order." He wanted to shrug off the grip. Poe's fingers rubbing his shoulder, like the pilot sometimes rubbed BB-8._ _

__"One man's traitor is another man's asset," Poe said. "Or something."_ _

__Finn laughed, then clapped a hand over his mouth as the laugh turned into another noise entirely. A keen. A moan. "I never even knew their names," he admitted. "We grew up together. We - the Order is based on systems of tens. Easy enough, most species have ten fingers and the Order only took humanoids." Finn lowered his hands. Wiggled his fingers. Remembered being taught, that first terrible year. How his life was reduced to series of the number ten, over and over. Ten minutes to shower and change, ten minutes to eat every ten hours, ten hours of training, ten cells to clean. "There were ten of us in a squad. 2180-2189. I knew them for ten years."_ _

__Ten years of cleaning the ship, every ship, any ship, ten years of getting dirty and clean and dirty again together. Ten years as they hardened and became men, before their very first mission to Jakku._ _

__"You were friends."_ _

__"No," Finn said, swiftly. Rey was his friend. Poe was his friend. The other troopers were his comrades, and that was different. "We didn't tell each other stories or - or laugh. We just watched out for each other. If I was sick, someone would give me their rations. We covered weaknesses. We didn't rat out other squad members to ranking officers."_ _

__"Sounds like friendship to me."_ _

__"I left." Poe knew this already but the admittance still left Finn feeling raw, hollowed. "First chance I got. I saw you and I left them and until the whole ship exploded I didn't even think about them again. That's not friendship. That's convenience."_ _

__Poe scrubbed a hand over his face. He needed to shave, Finn thought. Shaving was part of protocol. The Resistance was different. His thoughts followed the same tired tune. "How old were you?" Poe asked. "When you were taken by the Order?"_ _

__"Young. A child. I don't know how old." He licked his lips, then admitted. "They told us we weren't taken. They told us our mothers gave us to them. Sold us. That our mothers didn't care, and wanted us gone."_ _

__BB-8 beeped, and it sounded sad. Most every surface was covered by sleeping or half-asleep Resistance fighters. Good. Finn didn't want his sob story to be overheard. It wasn't that different from Rey's, who had been left on a desert to fend for herself. It wasn't that different, he reasoned, from anyone._ _

__"That's called slavery," Poe said, so gently. "In the New Republic, we call that slavery. You're not allowed to take children, buddy. Or buy them."_ _

__"I know that," Finn snapped. "I'm not a slave, I'm a soldier." His face felt uncommonly hot._ _

__"Soldiers have a choice." Poe gestured at the Falcon, the dozens sleeping end to end on the cold metal floors. "We all chose this. And I'd choose it again. And there's loyalty and there's ranks and there's commands but we don't impress people into our army. We don't force people to die. And we sure as hell don't take away names."_ _

__"I was nothing." Finn grasped for his oldest training. "I would have grown up to be a thief or a murderer. The First Order gave me a mission."_ _

__Now Poe's gaze turned hard again. Finn realized he had become a thief and a murderer. That it had all been for nothing. He gasped, "but I am loyal to the Resistance."_ _

__"Fuck, Finn -"_ _

__"I promise. I know I wanted to run." Twice, but Poe didn't know about the escape pod, or how Rose had stopped him. "I was just thinking about my old squad. I know they had to die." Did he? Did they have to? Given the opportunity, would they have made the same choice Finn did? He had no clue. Stormtroopers had so few choices in their lives that, when confronted with an opportunity, like Finn had been, most would have shut down. "They're the enemy."_ _

__Poe frowned. "I'm not so sure about that. Snoke was our enemy. Kylo Ren and Hux are our enemy. And the mask of a Stormtrooper - it's known around the galaxy as one thing. But it's not one thing. If what you're telling me if true - and I believe you - but it means that this whole time we've been hating and fighting and killing slaves." Poe looked vaguely sick._ _

__"Soldiers," Finn protested, weakly._ _

__"Children," now Poe definitely sounded angry at himself._ _

__Finn jumped in. "Not the whole time. General Hux wanted to experiment with non-clone troopers." Though Finn had met some of the clones, of course. They'd been his trainers most of his life, and he found the clones as varied and distinct as any species he'd met._ _

__BB-8 beeped again, and Poe said, "Yeah, I agree." He looked at Finn. "We've been looking at this all wrong. The dark side and the light. Empire against Rebellion, First Order against Resistance - all we ever did was split the galaxy in two. And over what?" Poe grabbed Finn's hand, as if impressed by the very warmth of his palm. "You were human the whole time."_ _

__"I - you didn't know that, before?"_ _

__"I thought you were an anomaly. But you're just - me. Us. Anyone, forced into a life you didn't choose. You had friends. There was empathy. Compassion. On Jakku, you chose not to fire your weapon."_ _

__"One of my squad mates died." 2188. They'd slept in adjacent bunks all their lives. 2188 was hairless all over, even on top of his head, and his race could live on very small amounts of food, given enough water. 2188 usually gave half his rations away. All the time. Everyone had loved him just for that, and because he could imitate any sound in the world. A droid's beeps. Water. A bird call. His blood, it turned out, was as red as Finn's own. "I disobeyed an order. I would have been reconditioned if I hadn't run."_ _

__"Reconditioned?"_ _

__Finn swallowed. "Do I have to talk about that?" If Poe had said yes, he would have given a full debriefing of the myriad cruel and effective tools used to keep Troopers in their place. But Poe didn't say yes, because the Resistance was different._ _

__"Of course not." Poe's eyes swept the floor crowded with sleeping soldiers. "You should be telling all this to the general."_ _

__Ah, of course. Finn held his arms close. "Of course. I can be debriefed. I - I am ready."_ _

__Poe scrubbed his face and BB-8 rolled close, beeping quietly, and Finn had the feeling that he kept saying the wrong thing. It was too early for these conversations, and Poe looked so tired, and Finn was just another burden._ _

__"I don't even want to - what do you think a debriefing is, buddy? Fuck, we should have talked about this before. What do you keep expecting us to do to you? Because whatever they did in the First Order is not going to happen here. You've gone above and beyond the call, man. You want to tell the general what you just told me, I'll back you up. You want a one way ticket with an escape pod, I'll hunt down some rations and find a safe star to aim at."_ _

__This was the difference. The earnestness. The sadness. This was friendship. "I already tried that," Finn admitted. "Running away. Rose stunned me."_ _

__A flash of a smile, but Poe swallowed it quickly. "She's a spitfire, but she shouldn't have done that. Like I said, the Resistance doesn't believe in slavery. We don't keep people fighting a battle they don't believe in."_ _

__"I believe in the Resistance!"_ _

__"Bud, you don't know the Resistance. From what you've been telling me, we've been spending most of our time killing child soldiers."_ _

__"Because you didn't know any better," Finn reasoned, still trying to keep his voice down. A few nearby pilots were stirring, eyes blinking open at the rising voices. It had been such a long day. "But now that you do, you'll do better. That's the difference. That's why I believe in the Resistance."_ _

__Poe reached for the bottle of something dark and viscous sitting on the floor at his feet. He found a halfway clean glass and poured a pull for Finn. "I don't know how many we'll be able to save," Poe said. "I can't even promise it will be a primary objective. But I'll talk to the General about the possibility of offering quarter to First Order foot soldiers. If they consent to be our prisoners of war, we might be able to help them after all this is over."_ _

__It wouldn't bring back the ones on the ship, but it did make Finn feel lighter. "Not all stormtroopers will consent to being taken prisoners. They - We - it's brainwashing, what they do to you. I am loyal to the First Order." Finn shook his head. "The Resistance. I am loyal to the Resistance."_ _

__Poe tipped him more of the liquid. It was warm going down, warmer than the space-cold of the ship. Warm and thick as heavy sleeping. "I know you are, buddy." Somehow Poe still looked sad when he drank the last mouthful from the bottle. "I know you are."_ _

**Author's Note:**

> I never understood why, after meeting Finn, the Resistance continues to act as if the stormtroopers are the ultimate enemy when we know (at least Finn's squad) was impressed into service. I wanted to see a conversation about it. So I wrote one.
> 
> Everyone be a good bro at _Rise of Skywalker_ and remember that spoilers will land you on the naughty list.


End file.
